Freitag, 11. Juli 2014

Two giant prisons

"If I had to
explain the whole thing briefly, I would use the following metaphor: we’ve
built two giant prisons. Let’s call them “West Bank Prison” and “Gaza Prison.”
The West Bank Prison is similar to a minimum security facility, where prisoners
get to run their own affairs as long as they behave. They are entitled to
vacations from time to time and once a year they are even taken to the beach.
Some lucky people get below-minimum-wage jobs in nearby factories, and when you
consider the low prices in the prison canteen, it’s actually not a bad deal.

Gaza, on
the other hand, is a maximum security facility. It is difficult to visit and
impossible to leave. We allow in essential food, water and electricity so that
the prisoners don’t die. Apart from that, we don’t really care about them –
that is unless they approach the prison fence; or the “forbidden” perimeter,
where anyone who wanders too close is shot; or if they try to throw something over
the fence.

Indeed,
they occasionally throw some homemade bombs made of things they’ve managed to
smuggle into prison, and when they fall on our heads it really is unpleasant.
So we send our snipers to the watchtowers built around the prison and shoot them
like fish in a barrel until they calm down. And when they finally do calm down,
we cease firing because we are not the kind of bastards who shoot people for
fun."

Journalist Noam Sheizaf, "Why I
object to this military campaign, even as missiles fall on my city", +972 Magazine (10. Juli)